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Postcolonial Archipelagos

Essays on Hispanic Caribbean and Lusophone African Fiction

by Kristian Van Haesendonck (Author)
Monographs 402 Pages

Summary

Writers from different postcolonial regions are usually classified according to their different nationalities or linguistic areas, and have rarely been brought together in one volume. Moving in a new direction, Postcolonial Archipelagos crosses not only geographical but also linguistic boundaries, by focusing on two contexts which seemingly have little or nothing in common with one another: the Hispanic Caribbean, and Lusophone Africa. Kristian Van Haesendonck thus opens new ground, in two ways: first, by making connections between contemporary Caribbean and African writers, moving beyond the topos of slavery and negritude in order to analyse the (im)possibility of conviviality in postcolonial cultures; and secondly, by exploring new ways of approaching these literatures as postcolonial archipelagic configurations with historical links to their respective metropoles, yet also as elements of what Glissant and Hannerz have respectively called "Tout-Monde" and a "world in creolization". Although the focus is on writers from Lusophone Africa (Mia Couto, José Luis Mendonça and Guilherme Mendes da Silva) and the Hispanic Caribbean (Junot Díaz, Eduardo Lalo, Marta Aponte, James Stevens-Arce and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá), connections are made with and within the broader global context of intensified globalization.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Archipelagic: A Brief Assembly Manual
  • Chapter 2. Madness as Conviviality? José Luis Mendonça’s O Reino das Casuarinas
  • Chapter 3. Autofiction as a Postcolonial Strategy: Guilherme Mendes da Silva’s De humeuren van menee
  • Chapter 4. Beyond Animality: Mia Couto’s Transmutations
  • Chapter 5. Caribbean Cultural Discourse and Fiction in an era of Globalization
  • 5.1 Postmodern teratologies
  • 5.2 (Re-)animating the Caribbean
  • Chapter 6. The Heart of Lightness
  • 6.1 ¿Dónde? Locating the Caribbean subject in the Postmodern Non-place
  • 6.2 The Empire writes back … and goes global
  • 6.3 Decolonizing the nation: the Orwellian cityscape in James Stevens-Arce’s Soulsaver
  • Chapter 7. Travelling concepts I: From the Caribbean to Europe
  • 7.1 Composite cultures
  • 7.2 Towards a theory of literary creolization
  • 7.3 Literary pidginization
  • Chapter 8. Travelling concepts II: The Archipelago as a Spatial Concept for Literary Studies
  • Chapter 9. Narrating Postcolonial Lives
  • Conclusion: Global Entanglements
  • Bibliography
  • Index of Names
  • Series index

Kristian Van Haesendonck

Postcolonial Archipelagos

Essays on Hispanic Caribbean and Lusophone African Fiction

Trans-Atlántico

Vol. 16

About the Author

Kristian Van Haesendonck is a research fellow and member of the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group at the University of Antwerp. His interests lie in Ibero-American and Caribbean literatures and cultures, as well as in writing from Lusophone Africa. He has taught in the United States (Princeton, Villanova), Belgium (Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteit Gent), the Netherlands (Universiteit Leiden) and Portugal (University of Lisbon). He is the author of ¿Encanto o espanto? Identidad y nación en la novela puertorriqueña actual (Iberoamericana), Going Caribbean! New Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Art (Humus), and Caribbeing: Comparing Caribbean Literatures and Cultures (Rodopi).

About the book

Writers from different postcolonial regions are usually classified according to their different nationalities or linguistic areas, and have rarely been brought together in one volume. Moving in a new direction, Postcolonial Archipelagos crosses not only geographical but also linguistic boundaries, by focusing on two contexts which seemingly have little or nothing in common with one another: the Hispanic Caribbean, and Lusophone Africa. Kristian Van Haesendonck thus opens new ground, in two ways: first, by making connections between contemporary Caribbean and African writers, moving beyond the topos of slavery and negritude in order to analyse the (im)possibility of conviviality in postcolonial cultures; and secondly, by exploring new ways of approaching these literatures as postcolonial archipelagic configurations with historical links to their respective metropoles, yet also as elements of what Glissant and Hannerz have respectively called “Tout-Monde” and a “world in creolization”. Although the focus is on writers from Lusophone Africa (Mia Couto, José Luis Mendonça and Guilherme Mendes da Silva) and the Hispanic Caribbean (Junot Díaz, Eduardo Lalo, Marta Aponte, James Stevens-Arce and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá), connections are made with and within the broader global context of intensified globalization.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Flávia, Mircea, and my parents for their unconditional support during the process of writing this book, as well as to Kathleen Gyssels for hosting this project at the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group at the University of Antwerp.←7 | 8→ ←8 | 9→

Abbreviations1

BF

Blessed is the Fruit

C

Caribeños

CL

A Confissão da Leoa

CNT

Contos do Nascer da Terra

D

Donde

EC

Eloge de la Créolité

HBP

L’Hôtel du Bon Plaisir

J

Jesusalém

MR

Midnight Robber

MU

De humeuren van meneer Utac

OW

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

P

Pensatempos

PI

Los países invisibles

PSJ

Los pies de San Juan

RC

O Reino das Casuarinas

S

Soulsaver

SDM

Sol de medianoche

TS

Terra somnâmbula

V

Vampiresas

←9 | 10→ ←10 | 11→


1 The abbreviations are used only for titles that are frequently quoted.

Introduction

We are all Caribbeans now in our urban archipelagos.

(James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture)

Details

Pages
402
ISBN (PDF)
9782807603998
ISBN (ePUB)
9782807604001
ISBN (MOBI)
9782807604018
ISBN (Softcover)
9782807603981
DOI
10.3726/b11460
Language
English
Publication date
2017 (December)
Keywords
postcolonial literature Hispanic Caribbean Lusophone Africa globalization archipelagos
Published
Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2017. 398 p.

Biographical notes

Kristian Van Haesendonck (Author)

Kristian Van Haesendonck is a research fellow and member of the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group at the University of Antwerp. His interests lie in Ibero-American and Caribbean literatures and cultures, as well as in writing from Lusophone Africa. He has taught in the United States (Princeton, Villanova), Belgium (Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteit Gent), the Netherlands (Universiteit Leiden) and Portugal (University of Lisbon). He is the author of ¿Encanto o espanto? Identidad y nación en la novela puertorriqueña actual (Iberoamericana), Going Caribbean! New Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Art (Humus), and Caribbeing: Comparing Caribbean Literatures and Cultures (Rodopi).

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402 pages